Manicures are a popular way of caring for the nails and hands and ensuring they look clean and professional. A manicure typically consists of trimming, filing, and shaping the free edge of the nail, pushing back the cuticles, and clipping any cuticles or hangnails from the nail plate. Next, the nail technician may massage the hands and then apply nail treatment to the nails or a clear base polish. For many people, especially women, a manicure also involves painting the nails with a colored polish or lacquer. This process may also be performed on toe nails, a pedicure.
Nail salons are ubiquitous and the cost of a basic manicure is fairly inexpensive. However, many people still choose to do their own nails, typically at home, as a matter of convenience, preference, cleanliness, or for time saving purposes. Unfortunately, it is difficult to obtain the appearance of a professional manicure when doing one's own nails. First, most nail salons use professional grade products or tools, e.g., cuticle oil or remover, electric nail files, and UV or LED drying lamps, that are not accessible to non-professionals or those outside the industry. Those professional grade products or tools are specifically designed to help the nail technician create a clean and professional looking finished manicure. For polishing the nails, those professional grade products help create a neat, even, shiny look without any stray polish on or around the cuticle. Second, it is more difficult for an individual to obtain the desired brush angle and stroke (e.g., between approximately 70 to 90 degrees with respect to the nail and in line with the length of the finger) when polishing his/her own nails than when one's nails are being painted by someone else. It is easier for a second individual facing the person whose nails are being polished to position his/her hand holding the nail polish brush in line with the finger on the nail to be painted and on a flat surface to steady the painting hand while the brush is contacted near the cuticle at an angle and pulled down the nail, preferably straight down and off of the front of the nail. Third, the precision required to create a neat, clean, even polish on all of one's nails, on both hands, is complicated by unsteady hands, and awkward angles/decreased nail visibility without moving the hands, etc. Most people, due to handedness, are more capable painting the nails on the non-dominant hand than the dominant hand. When an individual needs to use the non-dominant hand to paint the nails on the dominant hand, most people notice a decrease in the quality of the resulting manicure, e.g. stray polish on the cuticle surrounding the nail or a messy or streaky or uneven polish.
Nail art has also become increasingly popular. Nail art may include designs or characters that are painted directly onto the nail using a small brush, techniques of coloring the nail using sponge applications or various brush strokes, or the placement of decals, rhinestones, or the like onto the nail using adhesives. Another technique used for achieving a design on the nails is to apply tape in a pattern on top of the nail, such as small stripes or a chevron design, and then apply polish over the tape. Once the tape is removed, a design is left on the nail. For nail art applications, as with polish application, proper angling and a steady hand are important for creating a clean look.
Some nail technicians may place a wrist rest, such as a foam block, under the patron's wrist, allowing the hands to drape down facing the nail technician. While these devices may increase comfort for the individual having his/her nails painted and while the wrist rest devices may be somewhat helpful to the nail technician, they fail to stabilize the hand and the finger in a fixed position (the palm and fingers are unsupported between the finger tips and the wrist rest allowing the palm and fingers to move up and down) and they are not practical for use when doing one's own nails.
There is a need for a device that can be used when doing one's own nails, but also when having one's nails done by others including in-salon treatments, that supports the hand and fingers so that they do not move, a device that also angles the fingers at approximately 45 degrees with the supporting surface so that the hand holding the brush, when on the support surface (e.g., the table), can angle the brush between about 70 to 90 degrees with respect to the nail, and so that the hand can slide on the table. There is a need for a device that can be used when doing one's own nails that helps position the arm and wrist on the hand to be painted comfortably on the supporting surface and also creates the desired painting angles between the brush and the nail. There is need for a device that creates a more even application of nail polish when painting one's own nails, a device that helps reduce “pooling” of nail polish near the cuticle. There is a need for a device that can comfortably fit under the hand of the user to create the desired nail angle with the supporting surface, a device that has a generally convex upper surface and a generally flat lower surface. There is a need for such a device that is of at least two piece construction having a top component and a bottom component. Such device could also, but need not, include a weight inside for stability and to reduce the slidability of the device on the supporting surface.